Former county water board member Steve Collins billed a Castroville artichoke grower tens of thousands of dollars over several years for attending meetings that either never occurred or he never attended, according to a District Attorney's Office investigator.

Investigator Heather Hardee testified during Collins' preliminary hearing Tuesday that extensive records showed he was paid for claiming he attended a variety of meetings. Several of the meetings involved the Board of Supervisors' executive committee — which county officials told her doesn't exist. Some were with state officials who said they had never met Collins.

Collins also claimed to have attended local meetings when records showed he was at another meeting on the same day elsewhere, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C., said Hardee.

In addition, Hardee testified that Collins improperly billed Ocean Mist Farms for county Water Resources Agency meetings he did attend, though he was also paid by the county for his attendance. She said Collins even occasionally triple-billed for some meetings, collecting payments from Ocean Mist, the county and the private consulting firm RMC Water and Environment, which hired him to work on a failed regional desalination project.

And Collins often billed more than one source for attending the meetings, she said, as well as the mileage and travel expenses he incurred.

According to testimony, Ocean Mist paid Collins between $62,000 and $143,000 per year from 2002 to 2010 for consulting work that included attendance at meetings he attended as a county water board member, and paid him more than $40,000 in 2011 when he was terminated by the firm.

Collins was paid $85,158 by the Castroville grower in 2010, the same year he was paid more than $160,000 by RMC for his work on the desal project, according to records produced by the prosecution.

And, contrary to Collins' claims that the invoices he submitted to Ocean Mist were "for show" and not intended to be exact records, Hardee testified that the firm's CEO Ed Boutonnet insisted Collins was required to keep detailed records of his work because he was being paid hourly. Hardee also testified that Boutonnet told her he had been concerned years earlier that Collins was "padding his invoices," and asked him to reduce his work hours on the firm's behalf and submit more detailed billings.

Tuesday's hearing focused entirely on Hardee's testimony regarding Collins' relationship with Ocean Mist, which began when he lost a full-time job with the firm after it underwent restructuring more than a decade ago. The hearing, which followed two days of prosecution testimony last month, is set to continue Thursday and will include further presentation from prosecutor Stephanie Hulsey. Collins defense attorney Mike Lawrence may also get to begin calling witnesses on behalf of his client.

Collins is facing more than three dozen felony charges for accepting payments for work he either allegedly didn't do or shouldn't have been paid for. Those include two conflict of interest charges for having a financial interest in regional desal project agreements, which he helped promote while being paid by RMC, and a slew of grand theft charges alleging he accepted monthly payments from Ocean Mist for work he didn't do or shouldn't have charged for between 2008 and 2011.

Improper payments made earlier than mid-2008 are barred from prosecution because of the statute of limitations.

Collins' consulting deal with Ocean Mist fell apart after he resigned from the county water board following revelations that he had been working for RMC on the regional desal project while he was on the water board.

Hardee testified that Boutonnet told her he grew suspicious when Collins submitted an invoice to the firm for attending water agency and county supervisors meetings after his resignation from the water board. Boutonnet asked Supervisor Lou Calcagno if Collins was still attending the meetings. Calcagno said no, and Boutonnet eventually found that more than three-quarters of Collins' charges were questionable, according to Hardee.

Testimony indicated Collins billed Ocean Mist for attending meetings on the county general plan that others said he never attended, including one meeting that occurred while he was at a state Public Utilities Commission hearing in San Francisco. He also billed for meeting with state water officials to discuss regional desal project financing. The officials later said they had never met Collins, according to testimony, including one who had already left his position by the time Collins claimed to have met with him.

In addition, testimony indicated that Collins had let his certified public accountant's license lapse between 2007 and 2009, but continued to list himself as a CPA on Ocean Mist invoices.